'MICE Conversations'. In this episode, we talk with Caroline Phelan, VisitBritain Meetings and Incentive Senior Manager Europe (Paris). VisitBritain (www.visitbritain.org) is the national tourism agency, a nondepartmental public body, funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), responsible for promoting Britain worldwide and developing its visitor economy. VisitBritain's mission is to grow the value of inbound tourism to Britain, working with a wide range of partners in both the UK and overseas. Through their global reach, the agency aims to increase visitor spend to all parts of Britain and improve Britain’s ranking in the eyes of international visitors.

More about VisitBritain and Caroline Phelan
https://www.visitbritain.org/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/caroline-phelan-tourism/
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/live-events-reinsurance-scheme
VisitBritain Corporate Web site (for industry): https://www.visitbritain.org/business-events-0
VisitBritain Business Events (for buyers): https://www.eventsaregreat.com
https://hello.cvent.com/hospitality-uk-mice-business-insights-sep21-recording.html
https://citiesrestart.com/report-launch-uk-business-events-worth-27-6bn-by-2026

Recorded Friday 13th October 2021.

'MICE Conversations' is also available as a YouTube video.
https://youtu.be/3rYoLPIKpX0

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome.
00:22 - How has Britain opening up ahead of other countries translated into the MICE market?
02:40 - Learning from reopening with new protocols to be ready to welcome international visitors
04:13 - How does the change to the COVID19 traffic light system impact the UK market long term? Are people more confident that those restrictions are as good as gone?
05:20 - Current booking trends & cvent platform
06:35 - What are the practicalities in terms of standards? Are there UK wide standards or does each organisation decide on what standards are appropriate?
08:20 - Have costs increased for events due to the staffing and labour in the UK?
11:00 - Has the industry in the UK used the opportunity for a strategic reboot? What changes can people expect?
13:20 - Any trends for 2022 in terms of different types of bookings?
14:40 - Are there any bottlenecks in the industry in terms of availability being an issue?
16:15 - Other challenges
16:55 - What is the role of VisitBritain within the MICE industry?
18:40 - Where can people find out more?
19:15 - Examples of sectors with supports available
20:35 - MICE MeetUp Dublin
20:48 - Closing & Outro

Video transcript:
- So hello and welcome to another MICE conversations the YouTube series and podcast. Today I'm delighted to be talking to Caroline Phelan, who is Meetings and Incentive Senior Manager Europe at Visit Britain and based in Paris. Caroline you're very welcome. Thank you for joining us.

- Thank you Michael, It's lovely to be here.

- So the obvious question with the UK with with Visit Britain is how are you getting on? I mean, from a European perspective, obviously you're based in Paris, I'm based in Ireland. We've all been watching since the start of the year as Britain, I suppose, has been ahead of the rest of us in terms of opening up. How has that translated into the MICE market, or has it?

- Well, I suppose, Michael, before 2019 the value of business events was 19.4 billion to the UK and that just plummeted like, like all destinations.

- Yeah

- So I, but on a positive side, I was reading the, I don't know if you've heard of the group, the Cities We Start group?

- No

- It's a group of industry around the UK and they requested a study by tourism economics, which commenced in September, So it's hot off the press really and well worth the read. They were predicting, business to b

'MICE Conversations'. In this episode we talk with Ciaran Delaney, founder and CEO of hubli and MeetingsBooker. Today, Tuesday 7th September 2021, MeetingsBooker has rebranded as hubli. Find out more on https://www.hubli.com. hubli empowers organisations to give teams space to succeed. Employees can access 185,000 spaces on-demand with in-built controls on spend, safety and sustainability. Meetingsbooker.com has evolved to now include group stays, workspaces and enterprise management platform.

More about hubli, MeetingsBooker and Ciaran Delaney.
https://www.hubli.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciarandel/
https://www.meetingsbooker.com/

Recorded Friday 3rd September 2021.

This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/9Ivb42DqRIw

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome.
00:30 - Background of MeetingBooker
01:42 - Was the recession the reason for setting it up in 09?
02:49 - Are there insights you can gain from what's happened over the last 18 months? Are there trends developing now that we're going back to work?
04:44 - Has there been an increase or decrease in meetings?
05:42 - A lot of organisations are hiring people remotely.
07:00 - White label route, in-house technology e.g. BP.
08:25 - hubli.com
10:01 - Evolution of MeetingsBooker
10:26 - Reason of re-branding & challenges
11:02 - Mission of hubli
13:30 - Are you targeting a certain audience? Is hubli.com suited to everyone?
14:46 - Where are you seeing take-up in terms of markets that are adapting to this new work environment?
16:04 - Future challenges
16:30 - Availability for spaces
18:02 - Focus of the business
20:13 - Where can we find out more about the product?
20:33 - Closing and outro.

Video transcript:
- So hello and welcome to "MICE Conversations." We are back after a short break from the summer. We were hopefully all taking some downtime during August. So it's great to be back and great to be back with Ciaran Delaney from MeetingsBooker. Ciaran, great to see you. Thank you for joining us today. I noticed some new branding on your top there, which we will discuss in a second. But first, if you could maybe just, for those who don't know you, maybe if you could give a little bit of background to MeetingsBooker, I know it was started in 2009 and before that you were with Tourism Ireland and also the City West Hotel here in Dublin. So if you could give us a little bit of background, Ciaran.

- Sure, yeah. So I started my career, Michael, with Tourism Ireland. So I spent seven years promoting Ireland as a tourism destination with Tourism Ireland in Italy actually, and also in Northern Europe. And I then took up a role as Director of Sales and Marketing for City West Hotel which is at the time a 1,000 bedroom conference hotel in Ireland. And yeah, and then in 2009, atthe brainwave of setting up my own business and becoming an entrepreneur. So I set up meetingsbooker.com in 2009 to really automate how people would discover places to meet and to allow them to easily book spaces online and to kind of automate that process and create a marketplace for MICE venues. Intrigued that you set it up in 2009, which obviously was the peak or height of the recession. Was there, I mean it's probably the best time to set up a business because if it doesn't work in a recession then it will never work. Was that the reason for setting up in 09?

- No. The hindsight is great. No, it just, I think it was just my career development, you know, it was the right time for me. I gained a lot of experience working internationally with Tourism Ireland and obviously at City West as well. So just, the timing was right for me personally, within the .......

'MICE Conversations'. In this episode I talk with Roger Dow, President & CEO, U.S. Travel Association, the Washington, D.C. - based organization representing all segments of travel in America. U.S. Travel’s mission is to increase travel to and within the United States. Prior to joining U.S. Travel in 2005, Dow spent 34 years at Marriott International, rising to senior vice president of global and field sales.

More about Roger Dow and the U.S. Travel Association.
https://www.ustravel.org/profile/roger-dow
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerdow/
https://twitter.com/USTravel

Recorded Friday 9th July 2021.

This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/axC7Wd69ByA

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome.
00:39 - Has travel re-opened smoothly in the US?
01:50 - When will the US open up again to travel from Europe?
03:27 - MICE. What is happening in the US right now?
05:06 - What are the protocols for meetings and events taking place in the US?
06:12 - Has the US travel industry changed, post-pandemic?
08:28 - Has anything good come from the pandemic?
10:32 - US travel trends, e.g. bubble tours, rural v urban, sustainable etc?
12:43 - Communications challenge.
14:18 - Experiences v destinations.
15:32 - Vaccine passports.
18:03 - Follow the science.
19:05 - Connectivity.
20:50 - A positive or pessimistic future for travel?
21:56 - Time for positive messaging from media, gov and the industry.
22:07 - Outro and thank you.

About the MICE Meetup Dublin
https://www.travelmedia.ie/mice-meetup-dublin/

Audio transcript:
- So hello and welcome to another session of MICE Conversations. My name is Michael Collins from TravelMedia.ie. And today I am delighted to be joined by Roger Dow, who is President and CEO of U.S. Travel Association. Roger you're very welcome. Thank you for joining us.

- Well, it's always good to be with you, Michael. I'm sad that it's virtual. I much more enjoy having a beer with you in person.

- I agree a hundred percent. Well, hopefully this is a, I think we're getting towards the end of this virtual world and things are opening up very shortly. So it's an opportune time for us to be talking. I wonder, obviously I'm based in Europe and most of our audience here is based in Europe. So I wonder if you might set the scene for us in terms of what's happening in the U.S. at the moment. Obviously it's mid July, 2021, summer season is up and running and I'm intrigued to know how are things going in the U.S. as in, we know travel is happening in the U.S., but I want to know, are there hiccups? Are there delays? Are there issues at airports with queues, et cetera, or is it running very smoothly?

- Actually it is running quite smoothly. The domestic leisure market has come back extremely strong. In fact, we had a holiday weekend a couple of weeks ago, and basically they had the highest number of people that weekend, 10 million, to go through TSA. Since January, 200 million Americans have flown. And the interesting thing is despite all the talk, we cannot find one case where someone has said, "I got on a plane and I got COVID." So it's come back. Now, we're having some worker shortages, which is a problem which hopefully we'll address soon. So TSA has moved through a little more slowly than usual, but we hope to see that up and going very smoothly when we open up into international.

- Well, that's great to hear because one of the concerns here in Europe and in Ireland in particular is the fact that, there is talk of there being delays and the additional paperwork that's required for travel. So it's great to hear that things are moving smoothly in the U.S. Can we move to international travel? Because obviously that is very important..........

'MICE Conversations'. In this episode I talk with Nicholas Alleyne, CEO of Blu Isles DMC Barbados. Nicholas is also Chair of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism MICE Product Committee.

More about Nicholas Alleyne and Blu Isles DMC Barbados.
https://bluisles.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholas-alleyne-94b664/
https://corporate.visitbarbados.org/priority-events/

Recorded Friday 18th June 2021.

This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/G1np5t7lPPw

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome.
01:09 - MICE in Barbados pre-pandemic.
02:49 - Trends? Safe equals small.
04:48 - Bubble experiences.
06:39 - Barbados property sizes?
07:37 - Safe Barbados.
09:27 - Current Covid testing protocols.
10:45 - Barbados rum hertigage.
13:21 - 2022, bookings or enquiries?
14:30 - What differentiates Barbados from other Caribbean islands?
17:19 - Has Barbados changed or has the MICE customer changed, post-pandemic?
19:30 - outro. Thank yous.

About the MICE Meetup Dublin
https://www.travelmedia.ie/mice-meetup-dublin/

Video transcript:
- Hello and welcome to another MICE Conversations. Today, you are either seeing us on YouTube or you are listening to us on your podcast preferred platform. Yes, we are now a podcast as well as a YouTube series. So welcome again. Today I'm lucky to be talking to Nicholas Alleyne, who is CEO of Blu Isles DMC in Barbados. Nicholas I know quite well. I was in Barbados a few times last year and back in December, Nicholas was my host. I was assisting a conference organizer who was in the process of organizing an event which will eventually take place. And Nicholas was brilliant in terms of taking both of us around the island showing us venues, et cetera. So that's when I understood that Nicholas was a MICE expert and somebody that we should talk to as part of this series. But as well as CEO of Blu Isles, Nicholas is also chairman of the Barbados hotel and tourism MICE product committee. There's a long acronym and title for you. But Nicholas really does know his MICE. He is one of the MICE experts in Barbados. So Nicholas, I wonder if we can start with just telling us what MICE was like, what the MICE product was in Barbados pre-pandemic. I know it's going to be different coming out but let's start with pre-pandemic. And just to set the scene, Barbados is a small island and a population of about 300,000. So, you know, it's going to be a unique MICE product by definition. So Nicholas, could you start with pre-pandemic MICE in Barbados?

- Thanks, Michael. Barbados pre-pandemic was an emerging MICE destination. We focus heavily on the incentive because of our unique and diverse offering. We found that incentive companies, rewarded their top employees with trips to Barbados. We created the unique experiences from board meetings on catamarans to our unique tours at the original first rum distillery of the world, with receiving local artisan gifts. Whether it be rums with their name engraved, local handmade mahogany, to all types of unique gifts. So we were creating unique experiences that had the employees really excel in so as they can achieve the trip, the reward of the trip the following year.

- Yeah, if ever there was an incentive as in the I in MICE, a trip to Barbados is pretty good. I think that will focus somebody's attention. Can we talk about trends, Nicholas? I'm conscious that what I've seen a huge amount of is one trend being everything going smaller. So safe equals small, as in less people. So 40 people going away on a trip versus 500 or 3000 and by definition, Barbados offers that in that it..........

#9: 'MICE Conversations' - FITUR Madrid, May 2021. In this episode I attend FITUR Madrid, the first major travel trade event to place in Europe since the pandemic. FITUR 2021 took place at IFEMA Madrid, May 19-23rd 2021. Interviewed are IFEMA's Director General Eduardo Lopez Puertas and Juan Daniel Nunez, Editor of Smart Travel News.

Useful links for FITUR and Smart Travel News.
https://www.ifema.es/en/fitur
https://www.ifema.es/portal-transparencia/informacion-institucional-organizativa/eduardo-lopez-puertas-bitaube
https://www.smarttravel.news

This vidoe and podcast was recorded May 19th 2021, at FITUR in Madrid.

This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/rnvnhOL4UtQ

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome, Michael Collins, MD TravelMedia.ie
01:09 - IFEMA Director General Eduardo Lopez Puertas.
05:28 - Juan Daniel Nunez, Editor of Smart Travel News

Transcript:
- Hello and welcome. This is Michael Collins here from TravelMedia.ie and MICE Conversations. Today we are doing things a little bit differently, instead of a Zoom recording. I am coming to you from FITUR in Madrid. FITUR is the first major travel conference to take place here in Europe since the start of the pandemic. So during the course of FITUR I will talk to the Director General of IFEMA who are the hosts of FITUR, and also to Smart Travel News, a travel trade publication here at Madrid. What's important as you see images of FITUR taking place is not numbers but the fact that the FITUR is actually taking place. This is the first event as I said earlier to take place again in the travel industry. The first major event. The fact that it is open it is running and it is successful. And the fact that they have tested everybody who has come into the exhibition grounds is crucially important. Others will be following this. Others will watch and learn from it. ITB, IBTM, World Travel Market, ITB Asia, will all be watching to see how successful FITUR Madrid 2021 is.

- We are in a venue called IFEMA which re-opens after almost one year of having it closed. And we're celebrating the most important tourism fair in Spain, which is FITUR. This is the first international fair that it's made in Europe. And we are very happy as far as you know, we have lots of international guests coming. We have almost 43% of our exhibitors are international. And we feel that we have really re-opened our venue and that this we would like to be the first upon a lot of fairs to be done within this year. After the first day, we've seen that we had 15,000 people that came yesterday essentially. but also we have 25,000 people that digitally were connected. So, we're very happy. We see that there's a very good atmosphere within the venue. We see people that are making business and we see that we have started. Everybody getting into our venue need to pass COVID test. We have launched a special app for them to be able to do it here, if necessary or if they can with it, that will be valid as well. But, we're very happy. It has worked very well and we've had no complaints which is a very good point, you know because everybody's very aware that with these new normality that is needed. The measures we have applied for making this fair has been very strict. So we don't have lanyards on paper every everything is digital. So once you get here, you need to pass through the gates and that's connected to your PCR test. So if that's okay, you can get in. If not, you're not allowed to. Then the special measures, we have 50% of the total capacity and we have restricted that to that. We are measuring also when people just conglomerate in certain areas. We also have a special a measure, of course you know wearing face masks and the liquids are necessary to be here. And then, especially for food they must be carried.....................

'MICE Conversations'. In this episode I talk with Pádraic Gilligan, Managing Partner at SoolNua and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at SITE Global. SoolNua is a Dublin-based specialist in business events, advising destinations, DMOs, hotels, agencies and associations. Many people will know Pádraic from his days at Ovation on MCI.

More about Pádraic Gilligan, SoolNua and SITE Global.
https://twitter.com/Padraicino
https://soolnua.com/about-us/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/padraicgilligan/
https://padraicino.com/
https://www.siteglobal.com/blog/meet-p-draic-gilligan,-site-chief-marketing-officer

Research mentioned in this episode:
https://www.incentiveindex.com/
https://www.siteglobal.com/page/corporate-insites

This interview was recorded Wednesday May 5th 2021.

This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/BGYmeo-lpWU

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and welcome.
00:52 - How did you get into the MICE industry?
02:24 - The name SoolNua?
02:57 - From practitioner to consultant?
04:45 - Is hybrid here to stay?
16:18 - Fortune 500 research.
20:00 - Incentive travel is the most measurable within the MICE acronym.
21:49 - Destination trends. Perceived safety.
28:15 - European trends?
29:46 - Where to find the Fortune 500 research?
30:38 - Remote working and digital nomads.
34:05 - Is the sustainable trend sustainable?
39:00 - Government and the MICE industry working together.
42:00 - SITE is back. First event in Colorado.
43:11 - SoolNua. Working from home or back to the office? A blended future.
46:00 - Outro, thank you, more info.

Transcript:
- So, hello and welcome to another MICE conversation, my name is Michael Collins from TravelMedia.ie in Dublin. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Pádraic Gilligan who is managing partner at SoolNua, a Dublin-based specialist in business events, advising destinations, DMOs, hotels, agencies, associations, and anybody who'll listen. Pádraic is also the CMO of SITE and many people will know Pádraic from his days at Ovation on MCI, so Pádraic thank you very much for joining us this morning.

- Thanks Michael, delighted to be here.

- So I know you've got quite a checkered past I did a bit of research and digging I found out that you're in the band and that you started life as a teacher. So I wonder, if you could first maybe tell the people watching and listening how you got into the MICE industry?

- Well, I suppose true kind of, yeah impecunious radius is the kind of the the reason and teaching doesn't pay very well and there's absolutely no money in performing. So, I was a kind of a, a very very poor father of, well growing family probably four at the time, became six eventually. So as a very poor father I realized that there wasn't sufficient kind of funds putting bread on the table, on a weekly basis. So, I decided to try and leverage another kind of string I had to my bow which is my ability to speak Italian. And I worked with Italians visiting Ireland in the 80's as a tour guide. That discovered the, the great world of incoming tourism and discovered the brilliant kind of privilege of being able to talk about your country, to people who were actually really interested in listening to it, which made a kind of a change from teaching where you're talking to bored 15 year olds who really don't want to hear about "Ode to a Nightingale" by Keats.

- So I suppose the, the love of travel and Ireland got you into it but you've achieved a huge amount since then, obviously you know, with your Ovation on MCI days and now obviously, SoolNua. First of all, I tried to dig around and I couldn't find it could you explain to me the derivation of the name SoolNua?

- Well, okay, so it's actually, it's two Irish words as Sool meanin

'MICE Conversations'. In this episode we talk with Rannveig Snorradottir, Managing Director, Obeo Travel DMC, who is based between Iceland and Namibia. Obeo Travel is a DMC for both Namibia and Iceland. Prior to establishing Obeo Travel DMC 13 years ago Rannveig worked for Qatar Airways in Norway and also Tumlare DMC in London. Rannveig was born in Iceland but grew up in Namibia.

More about Rannveig Snorradottir and Obeo Travel.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rannveig-snorradottir-90962220/
http://www.obeo-travel.com/

This interview was recorded Monday April 19th 2021.

This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/rp2HfFxB9PM

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro and Rannveig's background in travel.
02:00 - How is Iceland today, protocols, restrictions, vaccinations etc?
03:15 - Closed boarders and quarantine hotels?
05:45 - Over-tourism pre-COVID and preparedness going forward.
08:40 - Roadmaps. Government and industry working together.
11:55 - MICE demand. Wait and see. Winter not summer. Safe places.
13:33 - Safe travel. Remote travel.
15:05 - Namibia. Wide open. Low numbers. A safe place. Everything is open. One test.
19:18 - Namibia. Great opportunity. Under the radar. Groups/events are already back.
20:53 - Incentive travel in Namibia.
21:35 - The remainder of 2021, Iceland or Namibia?
22:57 - Outro. Contact details. Thank you and an urupting volcano (May 2021).

TravelMedia.ie run Ireland's only outbound MICE networking event, the MICE Meetup Dublin.
https://www.travelmedia.ie/mice-meetup-dublin/

#6: 'MICE Conversations'. In this episode we talk with Karen Yue, Group Editor, TTG Asia Media in Singapore. Karen overseas 20 editors and writers across Asia-Pacific region. Karen is personally involved in TTG Asia, TTG Associations and the award winning. TTG MICE. Karen also produces the company’s annual Asian MICE Cruise Conference in Bangkok, which debuted in 2018 and was held for the second time in 2019.

More about Karen Yue and TTG Asia Media.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenyuesf/
https://www.ttgasia.com/author/yuekaren/
https://www.ttgasia.com/
https://www.ttgasiamedia.com/ttg_travel_trade_publishing/contact_us#editorial
Karen Yue, Group Editor, TTG Asia Media, email: karen.yue@ttgasia.com

Interview recorded Monday 19th April 2021 .

Topics and questions, timeline or video chapters.
00:00 - Intro
00:52 - How has this pandemic been for you this last year?
01:46 - How are things in Singapore?
03:22 - How does Singapore compare to the rest of Asia?
05:15 - I understand MICE events are taking place again in Singapore?
07:36 - Is it government or private enterprise leading the way?
08:50 - Health passports and travel corridors?
11:33 - How is confidence in Asia, to travel again?
13:38 - Trends? Live v hybrid? Networking v informational conferences?
16:11 - When do you see travel being permitted again between Asia and Europe?
18:20 - Where to final out more about Karen Yue and TTG Asia Media.

This pocast is also available as a video, on the TravelMedia.ie YouTube channel.
https://youtu.be/SwKcoUH4f5E

TravelMedia.ie run Ireland's only outbound MICE networking event, the MICE Meetup Dublin.
https://www.travelmedia.ie/mice-meetup-dublin/